Historic Heston Blumenthal: mock turtle soup in pictures

One of The Fat Duck’s signature – and rather extraordinary – recipes

Mock Turtle Soup (Theodore Francis Garrett, The Encyclopaedia of Practical Cookery, 1892). “One of the gastronomic status symbols of Victorian England was the green turtle, prized as much for its lovely, rich, green-coloured fat as for its delicious flesh. Turtle soup was particularly celebrated, and a mock version quickly appeared for those who couldn’t cope with the cost or the complexity of the real thing”

“Browsing through Garrett’s Encyclopaedia, my eye was caught by one of his recipes for mock turtle soup, and it reminded me of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. The fact that one of Lewis Carroll’s most memorable characters is a tearful Mock Turtle who teaches Alice the lobster quadrille and sings ‘Beautiful Soup’ was a powerful incentive to try out the dish. The key detail was the Mad Hatter’s watch, which is discussed at a tea party and gloomily dipped in a cup of tea by the March Hare”

“At the Fat Duck we serve the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Mock Turtle Soup. When the waiter offers each diner a fob watch (a moulded stock cube covered in gold leaf), they place it in a specially designed teapot of hot water, swirl it around to produce a gold-flecked broth, which they then pour into a cup containing garnishes of egg, meat, truffle, pickled veg and tiny mushrooms”